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Passion Is The Fuel For Innovation, Experimentation Is The Vehicle

By on July 11, 2011 | Category: Article

If passion is what fuels innovation, experimentation is the vehicle.

My first “real” job in professional marketing was managing the direct marketing campaigns for a software company. I had zero influence or control over any creative aspect of the campaigns. My job was more like a scientist. I conducted experiments, gathered data, then analyzed and reported that data. In a big marketing department like the one I worked in, most of us were either on the creative side or the analytical/mechanical side. For solo consultants, and small firm marketing professionals, work requires a balance of left-brain and right-brain thinking and action.

My involvement in publishing content online is a combination of passion and experimentation. I am passionate about the subjects I write about, and I am not afraid to take risks. Even if the result is failure.

I recently concluded some experiments I’ve been working on that (in my assessment) ended in failure. I am closing down both SpaceElephants.com and ProSvcMktg.com. My goal with those sites, was to provide curated content that was narrowly focused on specific areas. While I was successful at that, I spent too much time on production and wasn’t able to deliver the quality I hoped. I may reuse those domains later on for other purposes, but for now, those sites can be considered obsolete.

Instead, I am going to put more energy into my primary sites: this one (More From Less), and AECforensics.com. My goal is to post once each weekday on each site. But there is still a lot of additional content that I think is extremely interesting, and I believe that I have (through experimentation) found the ideal way to share that: Posterous.

I have set up two new sites using Posterous. BLHill Linked (blhill.org) will serve as a “companion site” to More From Less. What you’ll find is curated content related to marketing, business development, personal branding, technology and personal productivity. Eventually, I’ll get around to revamping the newsletter to include this content (or at least some of it), but for now there are two ways to stay up to date: follow BLHill on Twitter, or subscribe to the BLHill Linked RSS feed. (Here is a great video from Common Craft explaining what RSS is.)

The other site will serve as a companion to AECforensics.com and is called The A/E/C Brief. You can follow AEC4N6 on Twitter or subscribe to the RSS feed to stay informed.

Ironically, what prompted me to make these changes had more to do with a failure in my workflow, as opposed to the performance of the other sites. Since getting my iPad 2, I have been forced to adapt my workflow. Using Posterous, I can easily post to either BLHill Linked or The A/E/C Brief in a few seconds using just my iPad. This means that I am able to share more relevant content, with less hassle and in less time. Thus, More From Less.

For those of you that are still on the fence about whether or not to start a blog for the benefit of your clients and prospective clients, give Posterous a look. You can literally be up and running with your first post just by sending an email to post at posterous.com. There are lots of great themes, mobile applications for posting on the go, and Posterous can also redistribute you content to multiple channels including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. Anything attached to your email will be posted and properly embedded, so you can easily share photos, photo galleries, video, documents, or whatever your heart desires.

No more excuses! Most likely, you are passionate about your work. Take a risk and start a blog to give a vehicle for your passion. If you want some help, I’m only an email away.


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Open Letter To A Failing Company

By on July 1, 2011 | Category: Article

I have lost confidence.

While I hide it at work, my passion has been sapped. I know I am not alone — the sentiment is widespread and it includes people within your own teams.

That’s how the letter started out. It went on to spell out with surgical precision, what is wrong about the company, its leadership, and its culture.

The letter was written by an anonymous employee working for Research In Motion (RIM) – the company behind Blackberry. Once the clear leader in corporate and government mobile messaging, the company has fallen behind competitors such as Apple (iPhone), Google (Android), and even Microsoft (Windows Mobile, or whatever it is called). The letter was sent to tech blog, Boy Genius Report, who after confirming that the sender was indeed an actual employee, published it. The letter has captured the attention and imagination of the entire tech world.

This letter is a call to action, not a statement of condemnation. Why wasn’t this just handled internally through the appropriate channels? As the author of the letter explains, those channels are closed. The company’s leadership is averse to feedback. Perhaps most importantly, the company leadership is averse to feedback from customers.

Five years ago, you would have to pry a Blackberry from the cold dead hands of a typical user. The devices were affectionately called Crackberries, because users were so addicted to their devices. The unique thumbwheel used for navigating through messages resulted in a common repetitive stress injury that was dubbed “Blackberry thumb.” In the last several years, users have begged the company to provide them with something that can compete with the iPhone. But RIM did not listen.

What is clear, especially based on reactions from the tech community, is that RIM is on the verge of failing in the marketplace. Without dramatic and sweeping changes, the company is doomed. Yet within the ranks of that company, are dedicated and loyal employees that are fully capable of the innovation and drive that led RIM to such great success. The leadership just needs to allow that to happen.

The full letter can be found here:

Open letter to BlackBerry bosses: Senior RIM exec tells all as company crumbles around him

RIM’s woefully inadequate response to the letter can be found here:

RIM responds to open letter published by BRG

What’s The Point?

The most valuable asset that any company has, are those employees who have such an emotional investment in the success of the company, that they want nothing more than to see the firm succeed. The raw passion that these employees bring to the job cannot be outsourced, won’t be found in new hires or by headhunters. Left uncultivated and unrecognized, it leads to entropy.

Good luck RIM. You’re going to need it.


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Overcoming Internal and External Resistance To Blogging

By on June 2, 2011 | Category: Article

For a lot of people, blogs are a valuable resource for information. The medium is intended to be a two-way communication. For most people consumption is easier than creation or production. Why?

I don’t know all the answers, but in talking to others, I have seen both internal and external obstacles that people must overcome in order to begin publishing their own content.

Internal resistance is the most difficult. No matter how successful we are in are professional lives, or knowledgable we are about a subject of interest to us, there is that small voice inside our head. (Now if you have multiple voices inside your head telling you to do certain things, it is probably a good idea to have the meds checked…) We all deal with this insecurity. Questions like these prevent us from moving forward:

  • What if I’m not good enough?
  • Is my writing any good?
  • What if I’m wrong?

Answer those questions with another question: “What is the worst that can happen?”

Besides internal forces preventing us from acting, there are external forces that must be addressed, as well. Most commonly, external resistance comes from superiors, colleagues and peers. To deal with this resistance, I recommend either of the following approaches:

  1. Try to find out what is really going on with this person that is causing reluctance. What are their fears? Are there legal issues, compliance issues, confidentiality concerns?
  2. Reframe the conversation in the context of how blogging fits within your personal/professional goals.

And if other people are still resistant to your pursuing a form of expression that provides tangible personal and/or professional benefits, my recommendation is to do it anyways. It is often easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission.


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Quote

Mark Cuban On Success and Motivation

By on April 12, 2011 | Category: Link

The point of all this is that it doesn’t matter how many times you fail. It doesn’t matter how many times you almost get it right. No one is going to know or care about your failures, and either should you. All you have to do is learn from them and those around you because…

All that matters in business is that you get it right once.

Then everyone can tell you how lucky you are.

Mark Cuban - Blog Maverick

Apparently Mark Cuban is on Shark Tank, a TV show on the ABC networks that airs on Friday evenings. I don’t watch much TV and I never watch programming from the major networks. But I have seen Shark Tank and it is the exception to the rule. Mark Cuban is really well known among business, tech and sports people. (Google his name if you don’t know who he is.) As a result of his appearance on the show, people have been asking him how he got where he is. In response, he reposted a series of articles that are worth the read.

Link to the full article


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And we’re back. Almost.

By on April 1, 2011 | Category: Article

So, after almost two weeks of downtime, BLHill.net: More From Less is back up.

A while back, I wanted to simplify my web hosting administration. I learned that version 3.0 of the WordPress software incorporated a feature that allows one to run multiple blogs/sites from a single installation. This meant that I could run one copy of WordPress off of a single database, which translates to less management. (Sort of fits in with the whole idea of More From Less…) The WordPress software and all the various themes and plugins are regularly updated, so keeping software up to date (and therefore secure) can be a real pain with multiple websites. When version 3.0 came out, I set up a new hosting account over at GoDaddy.com, and proceeded to configure a multi-site installation of WordPress.

I chose GoDaddy’s grid hosting service because the promises seemed too good to pass up. For less than $10 a month I could run a cluster of sites all under one administrative interface. Too good to be true proved to be the case. After about 8 months on the grid hosting account, I can attest to the fact that GoDaddy is overselling the product. Too many sites are hosted on each grid cluster, resulting in serious delays and a lack of responsiveness when visiting one of my sites. I used a variety of caching tools that are designed to improve performance, but to no avail. When I was logged into the administrative interface, it took forever for pages to refresh.

Now, I am very much aware of the bad publicity that GoDaddy generates. The advertising is crass/tacky at best, and exploitative at worst. And then there’s Bob. Oh boy. His latest stunt, posting a video of himself killing an elephant, is just about the worst PR I can imagine. (Did it have to be an elephant?) I still am a customer of GoDaddy – they are a great domain name registrar. But the grid hosting service stinks.

After years of hearing about how all the cool kids were using mediatemple.net for web hosting, I decided to give them a try. I am using their grid hosting service and so far, it seems to be working like a charm. Grid hosting is an interesting concept in itself. Basically, resources for webhosting and databases are spread across numerous servers on an as needed basis. So if there is a big spike in resource usage, more machines are made available. I can’t explain how it works, but I get the idea.

So we’ll see how it goes. I’m planning to continue to improve the infrastructure of this site and the others I manage. Right now, BLHill.net is the first of my sites to go live again. Hopefully over the weekend I’ll be able to get AEC Forensics back up, as well as SpaceElephants.com. I’m also going to be introducing a new website next week, ProSvcMktg.com, which will feature links to articles pertaining to marketing professional services. SpaceElephants.com will focus more on technology, and AEC Forensics will continue to feature news and articles relevant to construction consulting, construction law and building science.

As for this site, More From Less, I’m going to try to post at least once each weekday. Sometimes it may just be a sentence or two with a link to something I find interesting. Other times I’ll have longer posts such as this, exploring topics in greater detail. Thanks for hanging in there with me, and if you haven’t done so already, sign up for the free newsletter, or follow me on Twitter (@BLHill).

More announcements to come. Thanks again for taking the time to read this, and please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions or comments.

Oh, and as Steve Jobs is fond of saying, one more thing… If you are reading this by email or in an RSS reader, make sure to drop by the actual site. I have joined Woo Themes as a developer member. Their themes are spectacular and I am using their Canvas theme to power this site. I think it looks pretty neat. What do you think?


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